How Will 2011 Deacons Be Remembered?
It’s called the Music City Bowl for the obvious reason that it’s played in Nashville, as good a music town as there is this side of Austin.
But if this bowl were named for the two teams that will be playing in it come Dec. 30, then it would be the Bottom-Line Bowl.
Both Wake Forest and Mississippi State are 6-6, so one will end the season with a winning record and one with a losing record.
And that, to quarterback Tanner Price, is the bottom line.
“I’m going to be extremely disappointed if we finish the season 6-7,’’ Price said. “I don’t ever want to have another non-winning season and we’re going to do everything we can to prevent that from happening.
“We’ve been preparing really hard and don’t think it’s going to be the same team that we saw against Vanderbilt.’‘
Coach Jim Grobe said that ideally a team’s total body of work would be taken into consideration when determining the success of a season—the improvements made, the level of performance in relation to a team’s potential and of course, the difficulty of the schedule.
But Grobe didn’t have to spend 34 years in the coaching profession to learn that what is ideal is often too much to ask.
“Our coaches were talking about it this morning,’’ Grobe said. “The bad thing is, we’ve probably overachieved, we’ve probably done better than people thought we were capable of doing this year, and your guys probably ought to be getting patted on the back for the season that you’ve had – but if you end up 6-7 then all anybody is ever going to say is you’ve had a losing season. That’s just the way it is.
“They won’t even talk about the bowl game. They’ll just say ‘They had a losing season, they were 6-7.’ No matter how well you play, no matter how tough your schedule was, 6-7 is 6-7. We’re not really focusing on that to be honest with you, but we’d like to win another game.’‘
I pointed out that in years to come, those flipping through a Wake Forest football media guide will most likely draw only one conclusion from the 2011 season.
“You’ll just hope they will look at the last thing and see the Music City Bowl,’’ Grobe said. “They’ve got to go too far down.
“They’ll just see the wins and losses at the top.’‘